The End of the Beginning
by Winam
Summary: An exchange has been made, and Mulder is left to contemplate the consequences.


**DISCLAIMER: I don't own FM or DS, nor do I claim to. CC and 1013 Productions do, so blame them!**

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**THE END OF THE BEGINNING by Winam**

Have you ever experienced the wonders of space?

Felt the wonderful sense of awe as its beauty passes before you?

Seen stars glitter for a millisecond before disappearing in the wake of time? Watched meteors streak past in search of its destination? Reached out at spiralling galaxies that seem close enough to touch?

As I child, I dreamed of being amongst the stars, where one was so free that gravity no longer ruled. My life's journey had involved seeking answers I thought would be found here among the infinite realms of possibilities; believing that the truth may exist somewhere in this vastness, uncontaminated by earthly influences, unbounded by physical possibilities.

How ironic that space was not my liberator, but my captor.

The Alpha glides silently, a ghost ship drowning in the infinite space.

I stare out into a darkness as vast as the emptiness that now fills me. My captors do not imprison in a windowless cell. They know that no one could escape this floating prison. Prisoners of all races, genders, ages, stare out into the cosmos. Remembering the life they once led, contemplating their limited futures, while their captors watch silently from their airless surveillance rooms.

In the six years of my capture, the shuttle had not been in contact with anyone, alien or human. I was half-disappointed when I first came on board to find that my captors consist totally of the latter. Men and women who had lived in the vastness for a hundred years, and not having aged more than ten. They live in this limbo, waiting for the day of colonisation, when they will be free to return. They go about their sterile, daily existence; conducting tests on any newcomers; making their observations; recording the results. They are strangely fascinated by anything 'new' or 'modern', even as their technology surpasses all that can be found on Earth. They ask me about baseball and current political leaders. I answer as best as I can, but they are never satisfied with the tiny glimpse of home they scrape from the newcomers. They ask how Samantha will live back home. They ask me this question often -- Samantha had many friends on the Alpha. I describe my home, my job, my daily existence, while their mouths lie agape in fascination. I do not tell them about her.

A captor eyes me by the window. I walk on, down the chrome corridors of the Alpha, avoiding his gaze, looking outside through twelve inches of glass.

A blue and green planet comes into view, and her image flashes in my eidetic memory. I remember one hundred and one tiny details; her bright, red hair shining in the morning light; the way her mouth curved into a reluctant smile; how she would raise an eyebrow when she was annoyed. I remember the conviction she showed in her science, how she picked apart my theories until we stumbled upon common ground. I remember her compassion, so radiant when she bound my wounds, when she stood up in the face of the opposition. Above all, I remember the desperation I felt in losing her. Now that I've lost her for good, it no longer mattered.

My final memory of her was just hours before the impending exchange.

We sat in our dingy basement office in uncomfortable silence. I had told her as soon as I received the message that Samantha was to be sent home.

Her first reaction was to stare at me with her eyebrow arched incredulously. Then she spat her anger in my face. Angry that I would even consider such a sick joke. Angry that I had gone too far. Even as I sat there with my head in my hands, pleading to her with my eyes as my voice failed me. Forgive me. Please forgive me. I don't want to leave but I don't have a choice. She could not believe, could not forgive. And so I drove to the landing site alone, all the time pleading to the heavens for a reprieve. I knew it was not granted when I caught sight of the Alpha moving stealthily over me, and then capturing me in its rays.

I know she does not believe I am alive. She has left me far behind, resigning from the Bureau to take up her own private practice. She now has the 'normal' life she once so desperately craved. A husband, an adopted daughter, a family. It was what she always wanted. My secret wish was that she wanted those things with me, but I never allowed those dreams to propagate outside of my imagination. I constantly found excuses for my procrastination. The timing wasn't right. She doesn't feel the same.

It would endanger our partnership.

The reality was that we were both afraid. Afraid of our emotions. Afraid that expressing these feelings would lead to the loss of control, and ultimately, rejection. Now that all opportunity has been lost, I am forced to contemplate what might have been. Knowing that she will be old and grey the next time I see her, the years we spent together just a bittersweet memory. I glance up and down the corridor, observing the passing parade of prisoners and captors, and for the first time I am grateful that she is unable to see me, as she will never realise what a coward I am. I have betrayed her, yet I now keep these memories closer to me than reality, clutching on to these small, priceless moments like an eager thief clutches his loot. If she only knew that they are all I have, the only thing that can sustain me until I return. They are my only comfort, and my only foe.

My beginning. My end.

finis.


End file.
